Breathe by Layden Robinson

12 Tales of Horror, Suspense and Erotica inspired by the Human Condition.

Wow, oh wow! This collection of short stories blew my mind for a number of reasons.

It is rare to come across an author who is able to embrace their unique and quirky imagination and then just run with it, and not be afraid of publishing their works. In all absolution I enjoyed all 12 stories so so much because they were exactly the kind of “crazy” that made me think I, myself, was losing the plot.

I am often skeptical about horror, because it would take a LOT for me to feel the horror and yet, these 12 tales delivered the right amount of “Oh, damn, this is high class creepy right there!”. In this collection we have the detectives, the psychos, the misunderstood. Talking cats, hungry vampire, a frowning clown, horny mannequins and victims.

Each story unravels a bit at a time on the wave of brutal, beautiful and wicked play of words.

Here is one of the many quotes I liked from these tales:

Identity can be lost when you travel too hastily down the pathways of life and don’t look both ways.

I also need to mention that I loved the titles for each story, I liked the real and unreal characters I read about. In these stories the impossible became possible, the hunter became the prey and innocence became sin.

“Breathe” collection of stories is a fantastic example of experimental wordmanship. Dark and edgy overall theme left me wondering if I was suffering from a hallucinations gone wrong, or if any of this even existed… Did I actually read this collection, or did I just dream it in some trippy, otherworldly dimension?

I rate this collection 4****. There was a very teeny tiny amount of typos and because I’m probably a square I didn’t really understand the need for here and there appearing text in ()’s or []’s even though they didn’t take away from the stories. I think the idea was to have it written as a play? Anyway, still a very good and thoroughly enjoyable read!

Post navigation

13 comments

Interesting! I’ve got 2 books from this author as well and thinking of reading them somewhere next month. Looking forward to it after reading this review! Though, I gotta ask, how erotic is the erotica in here? ^_^

Cool… I really really enjoyed his writing.. it’s my kind of crazy 😀
As for the erotica bit- yes, I was slightly worried about that myself before starting… I should have mentioned it in the review.. oh well, hindsight is 20/20… anyway, It’s nothing as cheesy or disgusting as you get in the modern romance novels aimed at housewives! In fact, there are tones of erotica, nothing as graphical as that shifter book you’re reading at the moment, I’m positive! 😀